


The Bookkeeper

by TolkienGirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Male Friendship, Season 5 AU, Slow Burn, dark themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9434399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is at last a man in possession of a heart. But heart and head must both rise to the occasion when an unsecured Sherrinford in the past leads to problems in the present--and declarations of love are not easily forgotten.





	1. Chapter 1

_Five years ago, Sherrinford_

There are exactly twenty-five seconds left on the clock when Jim Moriarty stops smiling.

“You want something, too?” Whether Eurus thinks it or says it aloud does not matter so very much; it has only mattered intermittently in the last four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

He rolls his head from side to side, neck cracking and popping. Not so satisfying as a _snap_ , but one can rarely have everything. “Call him a birthday present.”

“Do you want him alive.” It’s barely a question.

“With a bow on top.” The smile starts crawling again, at the corners of his mouth, and it doesn’t stop. “No dog-eared pages, no highlighting…though, can’t help that, I suppose. Built-in.”

“You want the Bookkeeper.”

“Clever girl.”

“I’m not a girl.”

He sort of laughs. Like putting on another person’s body. That’s how Eurus does it. “I know.”

“Do you want him on your birthday?”

He flattens his tongue against the glass, then blows so it fogs. Drags a finger wetly up, around, swoop. “Darling,” he drawls, smooth and empty as a coffin, “I’m born every day of the year.”

Then the guards come in. They take him away, her Christmas present, but they can’t take away the glass. The letters may fade, but not for Eurus.

_I O U._

 

_Present day, London_

It was a month after the Baker Street explosion. Less than a week after the phone call. And Molly felt raw, exposed along every inch of her skin, under the impersonal eyes of agents with no badges. Mycroft’s men.

“This is a necessary debriefing, Miss Hooper.”

“I understand. I mean, I’ve already agreed to it. So…uh, if you don’t mind, do you think we could get on with it?”

“Of course.” The agent didn’t exactly smile. He didn’t look like he did that sort of thing. “Mr. Holmes—Mycroft Holmes—wished you to be informed that any…strange communications you may have received were the result of a highly sensitive investigation involving himself and his brother, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It was believed by all parties that your flat was rigged with explosives and that unless you spoke aloud a sort of…keycode, you would be instantly killed.”

Molly took a breath. A shuddery breath, but under the circumstances, she considered that it was probably better than not breathing at all.

“There were no explosives in your apartment, Miss Hooper. You need not fear for your safety. The threat—such as it was—has been neutralized. But it was very important to Mr. Holmes—” this time, he did not specify which one, and she felt a strange little twist to her insides—“That you understand the nature of the circumstances. Mr. Holmes extends his sincerest apologies for any inconvenience you may have suffered.”

_Say it like you mean it._

_Say it._

“Thanks, it seems like I’m going to be OK.” Because it _did_ seem like that, didn’t it?

The agents rose. Toby was still growling behind her bedroom door. He didn’t like new people. Maybe it never really disturbed him, that his mistress only ever carried with her the scent of the dead.

“Thank you for your time, Miss Hooper.”

She hadn’t cried, ever since that day. _On_ that day, plenty. Crumpled down by her counter, hands and knees shaking. Big, ugly sobs.

_I love you._

_I_ love _you_.

Had she imagined that inflection?

 _…any inconvenience you may have suffered_.

The tears came, then.

 

“Have you talked to her?”

“I talked to her five minutes ago, John. I explained the solar system. I know how much you want your daughter to have a thorough understanding of that indispensable phenomenon.”

“ _Molly_ , Sherlock. Have you talked to Molly?”

“Molly Hooper?”

“No, the other Molly you know.” John’s hands were on his hips. It was the parenting thing; it just sort of stuck after a bit. Only Rosie wasn’t old enough to be scolded. _Huh_. Parenting thing had been in the works a bit longer. “Of course, I mean Molly Hooper.”

Sherlock tugged at one of the papers stabbed to the mantle, tearing it free. Eyes carefully removed from John. “I wanted to be sensitive. Trying that out, you know. Sensitivity.” He gave a flick of his wrist, flitting, demonstrative. “The whole…emotions thing.”

“Yeah, OK, good. But the thing is— _she_ doesn’t know that.”

“You don’t know what she knows.” Carefully controlled tone, back straight, still facing away. John narrowed his eyes.

“I was there, Sherlock. I heard the phone call. You two need to talk. About…whatever is between you.”

Silence.

“You bought a yellow chair, Sherlock. I may see and not observe, but I know that we don’t have a third person living in this flat, you’ve never cared about an extra chair before, there’s a sofa—and Molly likes yellow. Conclusion: you want her to come and visit.”

“Thank you, John. Shall I hire you? Right. I already have. Blog about something. Read to your daughter about elementary science. Invite Molly for tea. But do stop going on about the furniture.”

John rubbed the back of his neck, smiling. “Did you just say invite Molly for tea?”

Silence.

 

The flowers arrived the day after the debriefing. White calla lilies, of all things; a sheaf. Sleek and elegant. The card said, _S.H._

Molly rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes. Toby blinked inscrutably.

 

“You know, you can talk about it.”

“Talk about what? Do you know, John, your daughter is showing marked of high intelligence for a child her age?”

“I know, she’s perfect. _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock paused, in truth, halfway in the middle of aero-planing a spoon of mashed peas into Rosie’s mouth, though he wouldn’t have admitted it for the world. If this was about Molly again, he wasn’t going to discuss it. He’d sent her flowers two weeks ago. Still, he’d heard nothing. Saving someone’s life, saying those words—

He was human. Less than human, maybe, in these regards. He couldn’t do anything all at once. Not when it came to Molly. “John.”

“Your visits. To…Eurus.” It was still in the back of John’s eyes; that soldier hardness that meant he wasn’t far from being afraid. But he was John, so he kept going. “If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

Sherlock pressed a light kiss on Rosie’s curly head before answering. Funny thing about little gestures of physical affection; he rarely used them (rarely _had_ used them, was that all going to change?), but they did give him more time to think. “I know. Thank you. There isn’t much to tell.” There wasn’t much to tell that John would understand. He’d seen her twice in the past week. Two helicopter flights. She was reinstated, all white and glass and gray. Madness in the blank eyes, but less, much less, when her violin was in her hands.

When his violin was in his.

“There’s a very long road ahead, John. I…appreciate your concern.”

“Of course. Of course.”

 

Lestrade came in one afternoon, uninvited, wearing a jumper instead of his usual coat and button-down.

“Griffith.”

“Ha.” He waggled a finger. “I know better now, Sherlock. I know you know.”

“Fine.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “ _Greg._ New taste in clothes, quite suddenly, or you’re still seeing the one with the kids in Rio.”

“What? No. We broke it off.” He frowned. “I found out about the kids in Rio.”

“Right then. New relationship already?”

“Sod off, Sherlock.”

“Greg,” John said, coming in. “You look well. Popped round for a visit?”

“Yeah, wanted to see how the new, old flat was coming along.”

Sherlock beamed. “As close to the old as we could possibly manage, isn’t that right, John?”

John chuckled. “Yeah. Rosie and I are thinking of relocating, if Sherlock will stop keeping body parts in the fridge.”

Sherlock scoffed at that. “She can’t open the refrigerator doors yet. Don’t be ridiculous.”

John cocked a thumb in his direction. “That’s why we’re only _thinking_ of relocating.”

“Cool. I’ve got a new batch of cases coming in tomorrow, Sherlock. And I’m running by the morgue tomorrow afternoon to look at a body. If you’re interested.”

A tiny silence fell and Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Is it interesting?”

“Yeah.” Greg shrugged. “Pop by, if you like. Later.”

Sherlock leaned back in his chair. The beetle and bat collection had not yet been replaced on the mantle; it was troubling. He’d have to procure more taxidermy. Maybe a small mammal? John could be reasoned with. “Is Lestrade plotting some sort of chance meeting between myself and Molly Hooper?”

“Not just Lestrade,” John said, too wisely. As was his wont.

 

The calla lilies had faded, and Molly was sorry. But she couldn’t quite bring herself towards any ulterior action. Her phone buzzed: John.

_Please come visit. Rosie misses you._

She typed, _I miss her too._

And made no promises.

 

_What is your emergency?_

_There’s been a break-in. She’s bleeding, someone’s attacked her—they’ve cut her—it’s awful_

_Miss, please. What’s the address?_

_Twenty-three Beaufort Street—this is really—please—_

 

“I will have Lestrade skewered if he’s dragged me out of the flat on something dull.”

“No, you won’t.”

Sherlock smiled. “No, I really won’t. Tempting, though. Rosie with Mrs. H.?”

“Yes. The more I learn about her, the less I should trust her, but the more I do.” John shook his head.

“I’ve locked up her cabinet of herbal soothers and pocketed the key, just in case.” Sherlock patted his coat. “Can’t be too cautious.”

A sergeant met them at the station door. “Lestrade’s already at the hospital,” she said. “He said to hurry over. It’s a strange one.”

“Hospital, not morgue.” Sherlock mused on this. “The body must not have been very interesting then. Something new.” He rubbed his hands together, leather gloves a bit stiff in the brisk wind. “I’ve been eager for something new.”

“You’re always eager for a new case,” John reminded him.

“Details.” _Emotional context, Sherlock. Destroys you every time_. “Shut up.”

“What?”

“Sorry.”

Lestrade was pacing the hall. “There’s a woman inside, and she’s in shock. You’ve got to go easy on her.”

Sherlock nodded once. “Agreed.”

Lestrade raised his eyebrows. “OK, then. Well. Her name’s Irina Knight, widow of the late Christopher Knight, one of the richest men in England. Her brother’s Anthony Charles. That’s right, Home Secretary. See all these men in black up and down the hall? They’re security. And last night, when she was at home—in her room—no security, no locks, didn’t do her a bit of good. Someone got in through her upstairs window, down from the flat above, we’re not sure yet, and mashed her up.”

“Let’s have a look, then.” Sherlock felt a curious little tremor, something unexpected and unpleasant. A woman, alone in her flat. Cruelty seeping in all around her. He shook it away. Unpacking his brain and everything inside it—unpacking his _heart_ —this was going to have consequences. Cobwebs, filling up his processes, just as he’d always feared.

And yet going back somehow seemed worse.

The woman on the bed was in her early forties. Dyed blonde hair, but well-done—she was wealthy. Well kept up, though the bruises purpling her swelling features made it hard to tell.

“Mrs. Knight. My name is Sherlock Holmes—”

She coughed slightly. “I know who you are. I read the blog.”

“Right, then.” He stood there. The observations were rolling, but they weren’t piecing together like they ought.

Lestrade shifted where he stood. “Mrs. Knight, please. I’m very sorry, but if you wouldn’t mind—”

“Mind?” she half-smiled, quick and bitter. “This is a police investigation, isn’t it, Chief Inspector? I don’t get to mind.” Shifting in the bed, she twisted and turned, tugging at the strings of her hospital gown.

John breathed through his teeth. “Jesus.”

Sherlock had seen it bitten into an apple, sprayed across a window, imprinted in his mind. Now carved in angry scars along the length of a woman’s spine.

_I O U._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow burn Sherlolly. Probably sporadic updates. The IOU concept at the end, I did see something similar in another fic--it's utterly different how it plays out, but if the author would like to take credit for that inspiration, feel free.


	2. Chapter 2

“I want to talk to Eurus.”

Mycroft leaned back, splaying his hands on the heavy edge of his mahogany desk. “There are no interrogation techniques that work on our sister.”

“I said _talk_ to her, not torture her.”

“Why not? She tortured you.” This, accompanied by one of those flat smiles Sherlock had always hated.

“I’ve…” he searched for the right word. Rarely had to search for the right word; felt like he did it a great deal these days. “I’ve forgiven her.”

“Have you?” Mycroft’s eyes moved over hrim briefly. “Still having nightmares, aren’t you?”

Sherlock lifted an eyebrow. “I liked you better when you were about to die.”

“Life must resume its pace somehow, brother mine.” He glanced about the room, then pressed a small button along a length of paneling. “We may now speak in total privacy. You see Jim Moriarty’s calling card engraved along a woman’s spine, and your first thought is of our sister?”

“I have more than a first thought, but yes.” Sherlock steepled his fingers together. “Someone is seeking my attention. Someone familiar with Moriarty, which is a wide pool. Then again, his reach and respect in the criminal world was…extensive. His calling cards are typically left alone. Playing copycat in such cases often carries a severe penalty. Our little excursion last month to Sherrinford suggests that his reach is only infinite in death largely because of Eurus. Therefore, I expect Eurus to have some kind of useful information, and an explanation, perhaps, that does not involve a copycat, but a posthumous message.”

“He seems to like those,” Mycroft agreed. “Hadn’t you better focus on something a little more…domestic? The London strangler’s popped up, again, after a hiatus—two deaths in the past week. Scotland Yard hasn’t been in touch?”

“They tend not to observe a pattern until three.” Sherlock glowered momentarily, then said, “If you have no insight as to how to communicate with our sister— _verbally_ —I suppose I’ll have to be patient.”

“You never liked being patient.”

“You’re so rapidly insufferable again, Mycroft.”

 Mycroft’s smile was almost too wide. “Since you’re the grown-up in the family, what else is there to be done?”

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “Were you…hurt by that?”

“No.”

“I’m a junkie with no sense of personal responsibility, you know that. Hardly the adult.”

“And yet.” Mycroft shrugged infinitesimally. “Your newfound touch with humanity need not be mine. Let it go.” He rose. “Your violin serenades seem to be Eurus’s only interest in ‘contact,’ as you put it. Keep it up. Maybe you’ll get somewhere. Music taming the savage beast, and all that.”

Sherlock ground his teeth. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”

“I don’t have secrets.” Mycroft’s eyes bored into him. “Not anymore.”

 

“Sherlock, it’s Greg. Lestrade. The London strangler might be back—call me.”

Sherlock deleted the voicemail, mentally filed away, _three_.

 

“Greg!”

“Hello, Molly.”

Everyone’s voices echoed in a morgue. That was one of the reasons she’d always loved seeing _him_ here, listening to that booming baritone shaking the barest touches of life into the sterility and silence.

“You wanted to see the strangling victims, probably.”

“Yeah, if y’don’t mind.”

She rolled out the three—two were teenagers. That always stung.

“I told Sherlock he needs to get involved, but he’s off on…another case of ours.” Greg sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “He’s got his reasons, since the whole Musgrave thing.”

“Musgrave?” Molly tugged at her gloves, hoping that her voice wasn’t off. Tinny.

“Yeah, his old house—Christ, I thought he told you. That bastard hasn’t been round, has he?” Greg had a specific tone for realization, Molly thought. It was in full force at the moment.

“Nope.” _He sent flowers_. She could have said that, but she didn’t.

“You should go see the flat. It’s insane, how fast he’s been putting it back together.”

“He’s Sherlock. His schedules don’t run like everyone else’s,” said Molly.

Greg merely harrumphed in answer.

 

When she closes her eyes, the girl on the plane is gone. The throbbing engine is gone.

She is gone. Hollowed out. She touches the glass. New glass. New security.

They don’t come down very often, when they do, they stay three feet back.

Just like they’re supposed to.

_Sherlock. Help me._

If it weren’t for his visits, she’d go mad.

The only trouble is, she already has.

 

Molly hated herself, rather often, and for a great many things. Particularly, she hated herself for knowing his footsteps, and the way they rang on the concrete floors.

“Sherlock.” It was the first time she’d seen him. First time she’d heard his voice. Since, since, since. She felt pale, but the moment kept happening anyway.

“Molly.”

_I love you. Molly, please._

“I—I can wheel out the strangulation victims.”

He nodded. Cupid’s bow lips pinched together, as though he was lost in thought. “I suppose that would be helpful.”

“Did you want—something else?”

_I’m not having a good day._

“I’m concerned with a body that isn’t dead yet,” he said cryptically, but he bent down to examine the pale corpses all the same. Magnifying glass an inch from the shadowy fingerprints on the boy’s throat. “Did you get the flowers?”

A pause. A rushing sound in her ears. “Yes.”

“It’s definitely him.”

“Sorry, who?”

“The London strangler. Rather uncreative moniker. But he chokes first, and crushes the trachea with the heel of his hand. Very distinctive pattern.”

“Had you caught him before?”

“I wasn’t engaged on the case. Then he stopped strangling for a while. Or kept it to a minimum. Some people get their fix.” He straightened. “Some never do.” She recognized the look in his eyes, or thought she did.

_Molly, I think I’m going to die._

“Sherlock, what’s going on?”

“Amazing, how the dead keep up with the living. Keep me posted, Molly. I don’t delete your texts.”

His coat flapped behind him, and he was gone.

Her phone buzzed.

_John wants you to come and have tea. -SH_

 

“It looks good, Sherlock. Really good. Holy—what is that?”

“It’s a stuffed marmot. Charming, isn’t it?”

John stared at the tiny pointed teeth. “They’re supposed to be cute. Why isn’t that one cute?”

“Taxidermy captures fear better than whimsy.” Sherlock turned his back on it, but he looked rather pleased. “So. Ready to move in with Rosie?”

John cleared his throat. “I’m…it’s about Mary, Sherlock. I don’t know if I’m ready to…”

Right. Places held memories. Sherlock, after Musgrave, would know that. And John and Mary’s house was the last thing to hold her. She was everywhere, no doubt, even though John didn’t see her anymore.

He faced the marmot again, sneering as it was towards the skull. “No trouble, John. I’ll tie another balloon to the chair if I have to.”

“You’re not going to forget that, are you?”

“Probably not.”

John’s phone buzzed.

“It’s from Molly,” he said, while Sherlock looked, or pretended to look, disinterested. Sherlock himself was not sure which. “She says she didn’t know what day I wanted her for tea.”

“Hmm.”

“Sherlock.”

“You said you wanted her to come over for tea. It seemed to matter to you.”

John waggled a finger. “You’re not an idiot, at least not most of the time. Don’t be one now.”

Sherlock sighed. “Tell her tomorrow, provided we’re not digging up Moriarty’s reanimated skeleton.”

John’s fingers tapped over his phone. “You got anything else on that case?”

“Just a thread that needs pulling.”

“Needs?”

“Needs.” Sherlock frowned. “It wasn’t one that I wanted to pull, hard as that may be to believe.”

The clock ticked on. John hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before; he had talked to Mike Stamford a day earlier and it had brought up some difficult memories. He was sleeping on Mary’s side of the bed. Sherlock rubbed his temples. There. His brain still worked.

 _Tick tock,_ said Moriarty, through his perfectly white teeth. _Tick tock, Sherlock. The game keeps going. Different hour, same hands on the clock._

 

“The intruder didn’t come from the flat above. That’s just how he left. That can be told because the window was shut from the outside, but not opened from the outside. See, the heel of a boot scraped down the glass, pushing it shut. Wouldn’t need that to open it.” Sherlock turned. The room was still in relative disarray; there were spots of blood on the floor. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the screaming, the dull thud of the blunt trauma to the back of Irina Knight’s head. She was turned over, face down on the carpet. He looked at the disturbed fibers.

_Still struggling…_

So. Blunt force to keep her quiet.

She was lucky to have escaped without a serious concussion.

“So if he didn’t come in through the window, where did he come from?” Lestrade asked the question, because someone had to. Someone always had to ask questions.

_Need you do this for me, and not ask questions—three words—_

“He was invited in. They have a cleaning service come every week. Not the sort of faces people bother to memorize. A cleaner’s uniform—buckets to hide weapons—the sort of thing that security gets complacent about.”

“So we’re looking for a rogue cleaner.”

“You’re looking for a hitman, yes. Probably low-level. You might find him in a ditch. Not the mastermind behind the plan—it doesn’t take a genius to slice three rough letters into a woman’s flesh.” Sherlock turned, almost said, _Come along, John_ , but John wasn’t there. John was watching Rosie. He knew that. Of course he knew that. 

 

 _Molly Hooper. Molly Hooper. There were no explosives in her little flat_. Eurus turns the bow between her fingers, draws out a long note. She watches Sherlock’s eyebrows twitch together, the tightening at the corners of his mouth.

_Is that one pain?_

His answer sounds uncertain.

 _Haven’t resolved it then, have you. Oh, Sherlock. And I broke it so well for you. Broke you so well for her._ She should look away, look away, but she can’t.

His eyes are like her eyes.

It’s the first thing she remembers about him.

 

John stared at him. “Sherlock. You went to Sherrinford last night?”

“I needed to think.” In point of fact, he’d hoped that Eurus at two o’clock in the morning might be more forthcoming. She’d only played to him, a great many things he couldn’t think of now. Too searching. Too deep. _Deep waters, Sherlock, all your life._

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

_No, never. Barely. Never is an exaggeration._

_You like exaggerations, you drama queen._ Mary. Why was he seeing Mary again?

“I’m fine. Didn’t want to be late for _tea_.” Sarcasm. Good, _good_. _You’re learning_. _Remember how nasty you can be_. Mycroft, this time, but not Mycroft now. Mycroft, thick-waisted and round-eyed, maybe twelve? Mycroft, with his chin in his hands, eyes wet. _Go away, Sherlock. I hate you._

“Sherlock. Are you listening?”

“I am.”

“One, it’s only ten in the morning—so, hours before tea. And two, are you going to get dressed?”

He looked down. Right. He was wearing a sheet—he’d started changing after the helicopter flight, and must have forgotten in the middle. “Might give Molly a shock.”

He disappeared into his room before John could keep lecturing him.

 

Someday, surely, this would end with Molly moving on. She’d planned it that way, after the Fall. But those two years she just spent waiting. Then there was Tom, and then there was nothing. She couldn’t love a stupid man, and that wasn’t fair, because a great deal of the time, Molly thought herself fairly stupid.

 _Definitely_ stupid, when it came to men.

“You came!” The stairs to 221B still smelled like smoke, but the carpet and paper were new. Molly looked round the room. It wasn’t clean, exactly—it had never been clean—but it was less dingy, what with the new…everything.

“Hello, John! Hello, Rosie.” She took Rosie from John because that was the easiest way to fill a space, holding a baby. Rosie looked like Mary, and that hurt. She had a little paper sailor hat on her head. John saw her looking at it, and rolled his eyes.

“Sherlock was doing some sort of origami. Couldn’t leave her out.”

“He’s really good with her, isn’t he?” Molly said, and then felt her cheeks flushing because she knew that Sherlock was behind her.

He was wearing his dressing gown, over a suit, which was typical. He had a mug of tea in each hand, saucers and all. “John must be so delighted you’re here; he couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“OK,” said Molly.

“Check it for eyeballs before you drink it,” said John. He had a little smirk on his lips and in the lines of his forehead, an expression that was singularly _John_.

Molly handed the baby back and took the tea. She probably shouldn’t have come.

“We got you a chair,” Sherlock announced, gesturing. Then he turned his back and marched back to the kitchen, rearranging strips of newspaper on the table.

“It’s yellow,” John said. “ _He_ picked it out.” This, in a barely audible whisper.

Molly swallowed something down. A breath, a sob, a laugh? She could never be sure these days. “It’s very nice.”

“Ridiculous.” Sherlock’s voice boomed out, interrupting her. “A, E, _I, O, U_. There’s nothing distinctive about vowel patterns, John. Nothing.”

“I never understood that theory to begin with.”

“Thanks for the tea,” Molly said, finishing it. “I think, I, uh, will pop down and see Mrs. H.?”

John looked at her for a long moment. “OK. Thanks for coming. Please don’t be a stranger.” He smiled. “Rosie needs you,” he said, very low and earnest. She wasn’t sure if he was really talking about Rosie.

Molly called out a general goodbye and left. The tea was sloshing in her stomach, as though she had taken in a whole sea of it. Upstairs, she heard Sherlock say, “Why did she leave?”

 

Shaking, trembling, shivering. He wanted water, but they only needed to keep him alive.

A new chapter. He could feel it under his fingertips. Chapter two. He owed that. He’d always owed that. He simply couldn’t help it, like most people couldn’t help him.

He translated. He read.

A new chapter. Give the people what they want; the things he used to want, the things he kept in writing.


	3. Chapter 3

_“You’ve been sent for.”_

He’d cowered, then, in the corner of his cell, as he cowered now, thick darkness, harsh orders, all the things he loved and hated.

_“Compliments of Jim Moriarty.”_

_“Jim Moriarty is dead.”_ He knew it; he’d written it.

That hadn’t mattered then; it didn’t matter now.

 

 _I, O, U._ Something more than a simple promissory note, it had to be. There was a code. Or wasn’t there? It tangled with his mind, how Moriarty had always jibed him for wanting things to be _too_ clever, and then Moriarty himself had gone to Eurus, the cleverest of all. _Efficiency,_ that’s what his enemy had…what he, dreamer and addict, had never really had. Not unless it interested him.

He flicked the letters out of the air, irritably. No answers yet; he had a strangler to catch, anyway. A strangler to catch, three letters to decipher.

_These three words…_

I _l_ Ove _yo_ U

That _certainly_ wasn’t the answer. But Molly’s face filled every space in his mind, for a moment, and he was struck by what was at least necessarily some explanation of his current immobility. Molly. Eurus. Mycroft.

 _Victor_.

He had opened too much; the proverbial Pandora’s box, only for Sherlock, it was a coffin. A whole series of coffins. He was not a mind, troublingly attached to physical form and exasperations…no, this was far worse.

This was _heart_.

_This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head._

He’d won _that_ round through mental calculations, through observation, through not quite giving in.

He deduced the entire room to steady himself. Mrs. Hudson had been prying again. John had almost dropped Rosie’s bottle on his last visit, then congratulated himself for not spilling it—though he, in fact had. Wiggins had picked the lock and thought himself smart about it.

Sherlock exhaled. None of this was lining up the way it should, the way it always had.

 _Nicotine patch._ He needed something; that was the safest option. That was going back to the start. He still couldn’t remember everything; he must have done something, something… _substantive_ …to push it all away.

Now? No such luck. All his usual supplies had been destroyed by the explosion.

 

 _Text from Lestrade:_ Mrs. Knight’s out of hospital. Police detail. Heightened security on her brother.

 _Reply from SH:_ I don’t care about security details. Just details.

 

Some days at Sherrinford, he was learning, were dead silent. Eerie and waiting. Others were loud—roaring, shrieking. Singing.

_Sixteen by six…_

He smiled, and Eurus returned it. She always looked younger when she smiled.

Younger, but never quite _young_.

She knew things. Everything, most likely. Eurus would point him to the strangler as quick as a twist of her fingers. Eurus would tell him why Moriarty stayed gleefully living in death.

Was Eurus even capable of being frightened by anyone but herself? He thought of slamming his hands against the glass (real this time), thought how her eyes would startle and go flat if he did something like that, if he snapped the bow in half.

It would not help him.

Eurus had learned what screaming was from him, but only _after_.

 

“He really is dead. You know that, right?”

“Really, John. Rehashing that again?” He threw a stray dart at the wallpaper. Mycroft and he had tried darts once; board games were safer. There were still a few stray darts lying about, though; this one must have survived the _boom_. “Moriarty’s dead. Moriarty’s sending a message. I’m a little bemused as to his insistence in replaying the same old ground, but frankly, even the masterminds among us must get a little redundant when our corpses are rotting in unmarked graves.” He grimaced in Rosie’s direction; she was placidly bouncing in some springy chair contraption. “She’s still young to—”

“Yeah, she can’t understand what you’re talking about yet.” John rolled his eyes. “We’ll work on that bit in a couple years. I’m just checking in.”

John. Too kind to ask about Eurus, too good to guess that the phantom prickle was never gone from old injection sites. “Moriarty is a vexatious little puzzle, as always.” Sherlock stalked the length of the room. “I need more data.” He shrugged. “But for now, the dead stay dead.”

John’s face twisted. Sherlock heard the words spin through his own mind, though he would never say them aloud.

Mary’s smile. Mary’s eyes.

_She really is dead. You know that, right?_

“You could catch the strangler,” John suggested, after a beat.

 

He could have, probably. But a day later, Lestrade nabbed him himself, in a manner of speaking.

The killer turned himself in, just after he choked the lights out of a junior MP.

“Getting a bit slow, aren’t we?” Lestrade asked, when he’d fended off the media in the Scotland Yard pressroom. “Sherlock, I need you. I need you _on._ ”

For just one second, he couldn’t breathe. “Prosecute him to the full extent of the law and take the credit, Inspector,” he said flatly, still pushing down that strange little tightness in his ribs. It wasn’t about the MP. A politician? John cared. John said, “Rest his soul,” and shook his head. But Sherlock? How could he care?

_You didn’t win, you lost._

_Slow. Getting a bit slow._

 

Molly found a café across the way from St. Bart’s. _Try new places_. It’d seemed like a good idea.

A good idea until her sandwich wasn’t really cooked and Sherlock swanned in from who-knew-where, making a beeline for her immediately, too soon for her heart to even properly flutter, or whatever hearts did when they’d been broken and built up again a hundred times, mostly by the same person.

“What’s the matter, Molly? You’ve barely touched your food. You were clearly hungry a moment ago—” he stopped mid-deduction, though she couldn’t be sure why. His powers of observation didn’t offer a window to his soul.

“Beef’s too rare.” She prodded it with a fork. “I know it’s silly. But I just can’t have blood in my food. Morgue, you know. All fine there. Here it’s too—”

Sherlock slid smoothly into the seat opposite her, feline eyes narrowing. “Too comingled. I understand.” He grimaced faintly. “Actually, I don’t. My disgust impulses work differently than ordinary—than other people’s.” Again, a touch of sensitivity that she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with.

_No, of course you’re not an experiment, you’re my friend, we’re friends._

“What’s bothering you, Sherlock?” As though he was the one bothered.

“You could call the waiter back. Refund. Four and six is rather much for that mess.”

“I’m not going to make a scene.”

“I’ll do it.” He raised a hand to beckon the hapless busboy.

“Sherlock!” She came to cafes on her lunch hour, tired of the slop in tin trays that the morgue served. She was trying to add little bits of enjoyment to her day, somehow, whenever possible. The therapist had recommended it. Bollocks. Going to a therapist? Sherlock could probably observe that in the pattern of her jumper.

And what had the advice gotten her anyway? A plate of bloody meat, and Sherlock Holmes on the other side of the table.

“Fine.” He settled back down, coat and scarf furling around his throat. He wore that coat in all seasons, as though little things like weather didn’t affect him. “Molly, you haven’t been round to Baker Street.”

“I had tea there the other day.”

“Almost a week ago. And promptly left.”

 _I_ love _you._

“I’ve been really busy, Sherlock.” She pleated the paper napkin between her fingers. She shouldn’t have come lunch today; should have eaten the rest of the sleeve of jammy dodgers in her purse and considered herself lucky. “I’ve—”

“I need you.” He could have said it like some people talked about the weather, like he talked about everything that bored, quick-paced and dismissive. But he said it with that faint rasp in his voice— _Molly, please_ —and Molly was nothing if not a heart too big for her body.

“Please don’t…I—” The words would keep babbling from her lips if he didn’t stop her. Fortunately he stopped her.

“I’m embarking on several routes of inquiry at the moment. I don’t want most of them, but choice, it seems, is not so much mine as I once hoped it was. I need my brain, but _you_ help keep everything else in working order.”

Her jaw actually dropped. Sherlock rose, kicking out his chair, and said not another word.

He stole one of her uneaten chips and left.

 

There was a little girl in his dreams. Knocking all about the doors and hallways. Her eyes had too many pupils; she was Eurus, but she was also something else.

_You’re missing it, Sherlock. You missed it. You miss it._

 

“Sherlock! _Sherlock_! Bloody hell, wake _up_!”

He had three sensations of pain immediately: blinding light in his eyes, a splitting headache, and John’s disappointment.

“Where—Baker Street, right?”

“Of course you’re in Baker Street.”

He was on the floor. John was kneeling beside him, looking older than usual. Sherlock flapped an idle hand beside him, felt rough carpet and dust. Dust already!

“Napping.”

“Sleeping pills, more like.” John held up the bottle, uncapped. His mouth was a tight line of rage. Or something else. It was easier to call it rage. “ _Jesus_. Are you going to keep doing this? I thought you were—I thought you were clean.”

“I am _clean_. I just…” He stumbled to his feet to prove a point and had to sit down, rather shakily, in his chair. The headache, he catalogued and pushed aside. He’d had worse, and would have worse, judging from the trajectory of his past and present lifestyle. “I needed to sleep, John. I took a few pills. It was medicinal.”

“You’re a drug addict, you’re not supposed to have _pills_.” John actually wrung his hands, then turned, raking his hands through his hair. “I know it’s not been long since…Sherrinford, but Sherlock, if you need help, call me. Call Mol—I mean, call anyone. You can’t do this again. You’re on a case, dammit! What else do you want?”

Through his teeth, Sherlock said, “I didn’t want a case.”

A silence fell. Sherlock could hear the clock ticking; new clock, as like the old as he could find. Still, there was too much new here, sometimes.

“What?” All of a sudden, John sounded lost.

“I didn’t want a case.” Each word, drawn out, as though they were islands.

John fell heavily into his own chair. “Alright. You didn’t want Moriarty back. Of course not. That’s not what I was…suggesting. I just meant, you’re busy, right?”

“I didn’t catch the strangler. I’ve nothing on the Knight case. I’ve—I’ve got nothing, John.” Except nightmares, biweekly visits, and a strange urge to call Molly Hooper in the middle of the night.

“I’ll come back.” John pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll—I’ll post a few more ads for the house.”

“You’re selling?”

“Yeah, what did you think I was going to do? I just needed a little time.” John scoffed out a faint laugh. “I told you. How do you forget these things and remember two-hundred and forty different kinds of tobacco ash?”

Sherlock shifted but was silent.

John smiled. “You can say it.”

“Two-hundred and forty-three.” Sherlock smiled back. “The pills _were_ an accident, John.”

“OK. I’ll believe you.” John lifted a finger. “One condition. You need to get a therapist. Or something.”

“I tried that. After—” Sherlock glanced away, palmed his hands against each other, a familiar pose. “Mary. It didn’t work.”

“Try again. Doesn’t have to be a professional. Find someone to talk to. I know you can’t always talk to me.”

“I talk to you more than anyone!” Sherlock was affronted.

John raised his hands. “I know, I know. Just—good to have a second opinion sometimes.”

 _I need my brain, but_ you _help keep everything else in working order._

There was no way John could have overheard that particular conversation.

“Staying for tea?” Sherlock asked, to change the subject, and when John nodded, he shouted, “Mrs. Hudson! Tea!” at the top of his voice.

 

His assistant—not Anthea, and he wished it _was_ Anthea, as she was quite superior—tapped at the door. “Mr. Holmes?”

“Can it wait?”

“It’s a Priority Orange, sir.”

“Fine.”

The agent came in, shut the door behind him, and said, “Mr. Holmes.”

“Can it wait?”

“It’s a Priority Orange, sir.”

Mycroft sighed. “Just…verifying. What’s happened?”

“One of Irene Adler’s aliases has triggered our system, sir. We’ve run digital facial recognition, and come back with an eighty-six percent match.”

Mycroft leaned forward, the leather of his chair creaking slightly. Time for a new chair. “Bring me the file.”

The agent’s shoes tapped away, and Mycroft rested his chin on his hand. A complication—one that Sherlock almost assuredly didn’t need. He’d surveilled his brother as always. They’d bantered, a bit, but not quite as always. There was a keen lack of resolution.

Sherlock and resolution had always been a problem area; ten-fold now that he’d brought it all up again. _Eurus_. Mary’s death. The little pathologist.

“What do you think it means?” his assistant asked. She’d been listening; perhaps she was more like Anthea after all. “Irene Adler?”

“Nothing.” Mycroft said, but he had his own thoughts about what a carelessly triggered alias meant from a woman like her. Two things, not, perhaps, mutually exclusive: first, a message. Second—

She was running from something.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Disturbing (non-graphic) content relating to violent death of children.

The Diogenes Club was always wreathed in an equal, alchemic mix of sunlight and shadow. Mycroft’s chair, of course, tending more towards shadow.

John shifted Rosie to his other hip. She was intrigued by a new setting, and so was relatively quiet.

“We’ve been through near literal hell together,” John said, to the steepled fingers behind the desk. “You don’t have to pick me—and my daughter—up in your black kidnapping car.”

“I provided a booster chair _and_ a pram,” Mycroft returned, offended.

“The fact that you think that she’s old enough for a booster and young enough for a pram—” John sighed, replaced the dummy Rosie had dropped, and tried a new tack. “I’m just saying. I’ll stop by. If you need me.”

“How is my brother? Any more sleeping pills?” Once John would have thought the tone mocking. Now the faint twitch at the corners of Mycroft’s lips told a different tale.

“I think he’s still…struggling.” John chewed his lower lip, trying to find the words. “Sherrinford, Mycroft. I don’t have to explain that, not to you.”

“I should think not.”

“I believe that the sleeping pills were…if not an accident, not an attempt at an overdose. Not even an experiment. I think he really did want to sleep.”

“He’s always been restless,” Mycroft murmured, with a nostalgic shake of his head. “And you know he insists on visiting her twice weekly, even though—” he broke off his sentence, as though he had divulged some item of intelligence for which John was not cleared.

“I know about his visits to Eurus.”

“Ah.”

“And I know about the latest case. Moriarty back _again_ again? Hardly something any of us want to deal with.”

“Even my brother seems to have lost his interest in that game.” Mycroft’s fingers drummed against his hardwood desk. “Keep a close eye, Dr. Watson, if you don’t mind. You’re moving back in?”

“Yes.”

“Well. I don’t have to offer to pay you this time, do I?”

John huffed a soft laugh. Ages ago. Ages and ages. It was like he barely knew that other version of himself, the pains and ghosts of that era.

A better life, now, if one that brought with it its own tragedies. “You don’t have to pay me. Just stop sending the bloody car.”

“No prams, next time,” Mycroft returned, which was hardly an acquiescence.

 

“I don’t feel safe.”

“Ma’am, we’ve a twenty-four-hour security detail hanging about like a cab on a tickover,” Lestrade said. Patience was just indispensable; the poor woman had been carved up in a sick message from someone who wouldn’t stay six feet under.

Irina Knight smiled wanly. “It hurts, you know. Not in a shape. Not like I can feel each letter. It hurts like a bad sunburn, until I look in the mirror. And then there it is. I suppose I can’t take another lover, can I, Chief Inspector? Marked up like this.”

Lestrade’s mouth hung open. What sort of comfort—

Her glib words barely lasted a moment. She covered her face in her hands.

“Sir, if you wouldn’t mind,” said the stay-in nurse, and he was hustled from the room.

 

_Sherlock, it’s Greg. Lestrade. Dunno why I keep saying that. Oh, right. Anyway, I don’t suppose you’ve gotten any more leads on this I O U business? Not that I want more physical leads; first is nasty enough._

 

_Molly, it’s John. I’m loading my odds and ends over to Baker Street today. It’d be great if you were free to watch Rosie for a bit?_

_Or…you’d be welcome to hang about Baker Street, too._

“Molly!”

“Hello, Sherlock.” She took a breath, and to cover the shakiness of that breath, she added, “You look…really tired.”

“Body’s tired, brain still undecided,” he said crisply. But his eyes crinkled at the corners; it took her half a moment to realize that he was smiling. Smiling, at her.

“I came to help John with his stuff, and Rosie.”

“Same thing,” Sherlock said, and then rolled his eyes. “Joking! His stuff doesn’t cry on a timed schedule.”

“I can’t believe he asked you to be godfather,” Molly retorted, but she was joking too. “Alright. There’s a lot of boxes.”

“Used to complain about _my_ rubbish,” Sherlock muttered. But he was happy, in that fragile, beaming way only Sherlock could be happy, when he was solving something, when something was falling into place. It lasted only a moment. Molly watched the sheen of calm and contentment slide off his features, crashing somewhere remote, somewhere she could not find it again.

“I’m losing,” he said. His hands had stilled around repositioning some curiosity or other on the mantelpiece. “I’m losing, Molly.”

She should be angry at him. She should say, _You bastard, you called me to force me into saying I loved you. I don’t care if it was supposed to save me; it bloody well didn’t and maybe if I’d never known you at all—_

But that thought stopped her cold. Never know Sherlock at all? Not know the waterfall of his voice, too rapid and powerful and all-consuming for the rest of the world? Not know his eyes, not know—

“What’s wrong? You can tell me.”

“I don’t know if I can,” he said, in a moment of stark and sudden honesty. “Quite truthfully, Molly, I don’t know if I can, not without a gun to one or the other our heads.”

“That’s the last of it!” John announced cheerfully, depositing a basket of Rosie’s toys on the floor. His daughter peered over his shoulder, strapped into a carrier on his back.

Molly stepped backwards, even though she hadn’t been very close to Sherlock in the first place. “Great. Tea?”

“That’d be lovely,” John said, just as Sherlock said, “None left.”

Mrs. Hudson brought up a tray. And she brought enough conversation with her that Molly didn’t have to be alone with Sherlock in any sense of things for another moment that day.

 

_John, you’ve got to stop bringing me into your dreams. You’re doing so well letting me go in the daytime._

_You’re still my wife_ , he said, and the words floated in the dream-world all flashing and painful, like bright lights on a roadway, blinding him. _Mary, I’ve got to see you sometime._

 _Oh, my darling. Too good for me,_ she said, like she always said.

Always, even though he’d told her so many times that he wasn’t.

 

 _He’s always been restless…_ but so was Mycroft, then and now, and nobody ever worried about that.

His brother had retreated into himself. One too many revelations, conversations about who their family had always been in hiding, and who they now had to be in the open and known universe.

Mycroft made himself another cup of tea. The whole game was like one of Sherlock’s notations on the metaphorical rats fleeing the sewers. Moriarty’s glib, unquiet ghost; Irene Adler; the rash of criminal activity that was rising, rising, rising like a tide.

And where was Sherlock Holmes?

Fractured. From what Mycroft could tell; obsessive in sudden spurts of domesticity, of normalcy. Then lost to the world again through—what was it this time, sleeping pills?

Therapy. That’s what Mummy and Father had tried, long ago.

It hadn’t worked. Sherlock had forgotten more each day, and learned more each day after that. Reinvention. At various points it had nearly killed him; the erratic genius. Big brother had turned Big Brother, paternal in a way that demanded Queen and Country, for home and family had not been enough.

What would reinvention create now?

Mycroft finished his tea. If he was prone to weeping, perhaps he would have wept, then, in the silent space of an hour, in the long hallways of the house that was and wasn’t like Musgrave.

Mummy and Father, in their bright brick country cottage. Sherlock, in his incorrigible flat.

And Mycroft in his castle, cold and lonely.

More like Eurus, maybe, than either of them would have ever admitted.

He and Eurus. Always hating each other. Always fighting over Sherlock.

That was what happened, he supposed, when there was only one heart to go around.

 

John woke in the pale filtered dawn of 221B’s irregular light, with the feeling that he’d betrayed someone.

Mary, of course. Mary, forever.

He shuddered and exhaled, running a hand over his face. PTSD was the sort of thing he had to keep to the nights, now, because Sherlock needed a steady friend by day.

Of course, Sherlock, body worn near to death, had been the rock for John in that dreadful moment of breakdown.

 _It is what it is_. And Sherlock Holmes, as always, was a mystery of strength and frailty. All human. All of them.

John rolled over, to see if Rosie had woken in her crib—but Rosie was gone.

The deep-heaving breaths of a panic attack rose up in him, but he forced them down and hunted for his gun. But damn it all, of _course_ he didn’t have his gun under his mattress anymore, not with a child about. He forced the breaths down— _soldiers today_ —and dashed down the stairs to the sitting room.

All to find Sherlock in his dressing gown, with Rosie gurgling complacently against his shoulder while he circled the room muttering to himself.

John sagged against the doorjamb. “Je— _Jesus—_ Sherlock. Bloody hell.”

Sherlock shook himself out of his apparent reverie. “Good morning, John. Judging by her usual schedule, Mrs. Hudson will be bringing up breakfast shortly. Just used to assume it happened; apparently it’s all her doing.” He sniffed. “Scones, by the smell of it.”

“You took my daughter.”

“I find her inanimate noises strangely interesting.” Sherlock lifted his other shoulder, the one Rosie wasn’t leaning on, in a half-shrug. “She’ll be forming words soon, John. But until then—it’s pleasant to have so little conversational demand placed on me, whereas I can convey to her my current thoughts and troubles to her without interference.”

John gave up. It would take too much explanation. And anyway, wasn’t he safer here, now that Mary—now that Mary—

Wasn’t he safer here with Sherlock (and probably Mycroft, too, judging by their usual state of surveillance)?

So instead of arguing, he crooked an eyebrow brow at something else Sherlock had said. “Troubles?”

“I thought we’d discussed this.”

“Never to a satisfactory extent.”

“Not before breakfast,” Sherlock said, with an edge of disapproval.

John let that go, too.

 

_BBC breaking news: Several different types of explosives detonated this morning at a London playground. Two children were killed; eleven have injuries._

_Sherlock, it’s Greg. Pick up your bloody phone._

“They’re going to be taking this investigation out of Scotland Yard’s hands,” Greg said, shaking his head. “Probably international.”

“No,” Sherlock said, cursory and swift, ducking around the scene. “Too small-scale. And too many types of explosives.”

“They do random things—”

“Shut up.”

That was the Sherlock everyone knew.

“You got _anything_?”

“Yes. Going to the lab.” He had scraped up several samples into glass vials; probably nabbed from the lab in the first place, Greg thought.

John paused, bile in his throat, thinking of the kids. Families, torn apart. Made him think of Mary, how maybe she’d been relieved to die before Rosie ever could.

He choked down a sob. Troubles? Sherlock had plenty.

He wasn’t the only one.

 

“It’s an awful business,” Molly was saying. She had her lips pinched tight. Her hands kept moving up towards her face and then she’d jerk them away at the last second, remembering her gloves, contaminated by who-knew-what. “Kids. Oh, God.”

“Yeah.” John rocked back and forth. “Yeah, it’s horrible.” So horrible, that words seemed silly and void of any meaning in the face of it.

“Is it…” Molly’s eyes, dark with worry, sought Sherlock’s tense, silent form, leaning over the microscope. “Is it someone we know?”

In answer, Sherlock threw one of the vials to the floor. It shattered with pitchy tinkle of a Christmas bauble. “Theory verified,” he said sharply. His eyes, when he looked at them, were almost wild. “Knew it at once; didn’t want to believe it. That’s the problem of _sentiment_.” He sneered the last word, and out of the corner of his eye, John saw Molly flinch.

Sherlock must have seen it too, for his tone softened. He tugged off his gloves. “Not several different types of explosives,” he said, voice even. Heavy, almost. “Three, specially made types. Built around, or at least to _contain_ , three particular elements.” He paused, then said, “Iodine. Oxygen. Uranium.”

“Symbols,” John said flatly. Almost an echo. “I. O. U.”


	5. Chapter 5

He wasn’t afraid, exactly. Fear was something he wrote down over every inch, _every single inch_ , and so he lived with it like most people lived with…

Well. He’d never been much of an expert when it came to most people. Only his favorites had him pawing along like a dog after them; the chronicler of their every pursuits. Only his favorites.

And he was clever. Not of his own accord. Just of his own _record_. Recording. Self-preservation.

It left room for fear, but that could live beside him. It didn’t mean he had to be afraid.

Voice, words, order.

“Ready for another one. Go on. Read.”

 

Lestrade passed one cup of coffee over—thick, second pot of the day reheated, new staff sergeant getting lazy, too busy poking around files he shouldn’t be ( _mental note: mention that to Lestrade sometime_ )—and kept one for himself.  “You say he’s not back, but only he would be the one to leave this message, and he’s leaving it for you.”

“You can’t kill a dead man,” Sherlock said, distinct and aloof. Easier that way. “Which is why he killed himself.”

“But I thought—when your sister—I thought she was the one carrying on his legacy. I thought you Holmes had kind of…sorted it out. Put it all in order.”

“Nothing’s in order,” Sherlock returned, sharply. “Chronology is an observational tool, not a truth to be trusted.”

“Alright, calm down. My point is, are we looking for a man with the back of his head blown off, _again_? Or are we looking for something else?”

An exhale, not a sigh. Never a sigh, if he could help it. “We’re looking for something else.”

“Good. Now, we’ve got two separate incidents…”

“That we know of,” said Sherlock. “And that’s all you’ll know of until something else happens, or I do what no one else can and put it all together.”

 

_Send the helicopter. -SH_

_Now? -MH_

_Now. -SH_

 

“Eurus.” And the name still sent a shiver down his spine, _the East Wind, it’s coming to get you, it’s coming to get you, it’s coming—_ “Eurus, I need you.”

She swung her head from side to side, face unchanging. Like a statue, with pliable skin and nothing so movable, so human underneath. She stood, head still swinging, otherwise stone-still, as though she were waiting for him to resume, pick up his violin, play her into something less than madness.

He’d always thought that he could understand the language of music. Always, until now, when it wasn’t enough. “Eurus, please.”

 _She can’t speak. It’s as simple as that, Sherlock_. Mycroft’s face floated in his mind. Mycroft. The only one of them who’d never been broken and reformed, at least, not that anyone else could see. _She can’t speak. You couldn’t remember. It’s all rather the same._

“Jim Moriarty,” Sherlock said. Desperate, yes. He had grown almost used to being desperate. “Was this part of your plan?”

Eurus put down her violin. She stretched out on the floor, shut her eyes, and was utterly silent.

 

John shoved the table back a few inches, making room for Rosie’s playpen.

“What is that?” Sherlock stopped short in his pacing, seemingly incredulous.

“Somewhere that my infant daughter can’t reach any kind of weaponry.” John gestured vaguely to the nunchucks draped over the back of Sherlock’s chair, to the halberd that had shown up mysteriously and was propped in a corner, scratching a long scar on the new wallpaper.

“Hmm.”

John punched down the Union Jack pillow (replaced, by Sherlock’s careful search, but in need of breaking in), shifted it to a relatively comfortable shape, and sat down. “Question is, who would do this kind of thing? Bomb a playground.”

“No, John. The question is, where would someone get uranium? Depleted uranium, obviously, lower radioactivity. Used here as a sort of scatter-shot, which caused some of the…more horrific injuries. Would have been much cheaper and simpler to use some other kind of metal. Despite the news media frenzy, this wasn’t a nuclear explosion—these were trace amounts of specific elements used to leave a message. He didn’t want to start World War III in a London yard—he wanted to let me know…” Sherlock tugged at his hair. “God.”

“What?”

“Why this message? Why not ‘Miss Me’? Why not any other indication of his death’s head grinning existence? This…this unfinished business.” He paused, then muttered, “I O U…a fall. I fell. Debt collected.”

“Yeah,” John’s brow furrowed. “But from whom?”

Sherlock stopped. The world stopped. It always stopped when he was thinking (no, solving), brain moving faster than body, and how must Eurus feel, whose mind operated at a constant, unbearable apex of ability?

How must Eurus always feel?

“From whom?” he echoed. “I O U. He owes me. I am the collector of his debt…” He ran his hands over his face. “Nothing yet. But it’s something. Something about the message. Thank you, John. Inferior mind as excellent sounding board, and all that.” Before John could properly reply to the familiar insult, Sherlock wheeled away. “Mycroft will know where the waste sites are, where someone could have picked this up,” he said briskly. “I’ve been slow. Dreadfully slow.”

 

_I love you._

_Molly please, without asking why_ —

She jerked away. This was why she never took forty winks (or ten) in the daytime, on her afternoon off. It was silly, always led to the worst, most vivid dreams.

_He’s on a case. He’s always on a case, and he doesn’t need you. Not like you always want him too._

But there was something wrong. She could always tell that, because she knew what death looked like, and she was always most afraid of seeing it hanging about him.

 

“We received no report,” Mycroft said, hands folded calmly together. It was like old times, except Sherlock now knew that most everything about those old times had been less than…accurate. Or whole. “Our sites are carefully monitored.”

“I need to see the depository of your depleted uranium. More importantly, complete video monitoring of who came and left and all of your inventory documents that may prove relevant.”

“Inconvenient.”

“Necessary.”

 

“Sir, another update on Irene.”

Guilt was a curious sensation; it was piqued by every other emotion, most of them noble. Love, he supposed, in this instance. Yes, after Sherrinford there was no use in pretending that what he felt for his brother was anything but that.

And guilt came because he wasn’t telling Sherlock of the Woman’s return.

 _It oughtn’t to be guilt…her relationship with Sherlock is not your responsibility_.

That was a lie, even told inwardly, privately, compartmentally. Everything about Sherlock was always his responsibility.

“Is she in Britain?”

“Yes, sir. We think she’s in London.”

“You think?”

“She’s very clever, sir.”

“Hardly new information.” He leaned back. “Well. Monitor, and bring her in. Discreetly.”

 

The inventory, though hardly as massive as the States’ sites, was still expansive. Sherlock combed through documents like dinner receipts, barely scanning. No one had reported a glitch or inconsistent numbers; he learned, too, from unwilling (but cooperative, thanks to Mycroft) staff that the DU was occasionally sold to willing bidders.

“No such small amounts,” said one of the workers, standing awkwardly in his heavy protective gear. “Too minor…”

The man was a drunk, recently divorced, and was guilty about something. “You’ve lost some important schedule records, haven’t you?” Sherlock inquired pleasantly.

The man sputtered, but he copped up in nearly an instant. “J-just for the clean-up crew.”

“Janitors.” Sherlock sent a glare upwards. Not heavenwards. Never that. “Always. Even waste sites seem to have them.”

 

“She loved you.” Rosie’s eyes—were they more like hers or his? Blue upon blue, but she’d have Mary’s smile, he _prayed_ she’d have Mary’s smile—blinked up him. The picture of innocence. A cruel kind of innocence, for she’d never know what she’d lost unless somebody told her. “God, she loved you. More than she loved me, probably, and you’re much more deserving.”

He only cried with Rosie. She laughed at the drop of tears; and that made him smile against his grief, made him cough back the next sobs, hold her close.

 _You’re doing well._ He tried to look for her out of the corner of his eyes, _look for her_ , but she was still gone. Still invisible.

That was probably a good thing. Probably the right thing.

_Moving forward._

 

“Aren’t you productive,” Mycroft observed. Ordinarily he would have added something like, “When you’re not being a deplorable idiot,” and Sherlock almost missed the known territory of such a jibe. Mycroft was too…completely solemn, instead of smug, lately.

“Shoe size, lock height, ergo not your usual cleaner on night shift,” Sherlock said, a bit wearily. “Security cameras show a man used to avoiding facial recognition, broad-shouldered, thick-waisted at first glance, but mis-proportion suggests disguise, so we’re looking for someone thin, not heavyset, large feet, slight limp and stiffness in the right leg despite valiant efforts to suppress, so, old injury or defect…there, is that enough? I’m sure you’re mentally checking these specs against your mental list of terrorist suspects.”

“You’ve lost your spark,” Mycroft said quietly. “None of the usual spring in your detective step.”

“If the dead won’t sleep,” said Sherlock, “Neither can I.”

 

_BBC Breaking News: a planned terror attack at the private home of the Solicitor General was prevented this morning as a suspect transporting explosives was apprehended._

“You got him. Sherlock, it’s cause for celebration. You figured out who he was, and Mycroft’s people helped nab him. God, at least we can open a bottle of champagne, right?”

John’s optimism had always been an antidote to gloom, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

“It’s only the beginning.” And it was still the end for two children, John couldn’t have forgotten that, John the soldier who wept for casualties of war. The Solicitor General, though. He would be safe. No politician to grieve for nation-wide this time, or not.

John took a half-step forward, face open, expectant. “The game is on?”

Sherlock was very still. “Haven’t I told you, John? The game is never over.” And he smiled, then, but only because he knew John hoped he would.

 

Eleven-thirty at night, and her phone buzzed.

Which still made her jump, even though she’d fielded probably dozens of calls and texts since That Day. But this time it _was_ Sherlock, and so she had every right to be nervous. Hadn’t she?

_Bloody hell, Molly Hooper. You’ve earned that._

She thumbed over the screen.

_Want to come over? -SH_

She could have laughed, or cried. It was always a toss-up lately, even on a good day. (Did good days still happen? Were they _possible_?)

_Why?_

_Because John needs to sleep, and I’ve just made tea._

Molly Hooper was many things, but she feared that she was never very many at the same time.

_You could have married Tom, you know. And then you’d be—_

_Ugh. Tom._ She almost laughed at that memory, which was dreadful too. There was nothing _wrong_ with Tom. He just wasn’t—wasn’t—

_Are you going to come? -SH_

_Are you going to behave?_

_Don’t understand. -SH_

A silence of two minutes, maybe.

_Yes. -SH_

The trouble is, she’d do anything for him. She always had. She probably always would. She wondered what that said about her, about him. She’d made him say it first, but she’d still said it.

Molly shouldered on her coat.

 

Sherlock was standing on his front stoop, of all things, smoking.

“I thought you said…tea.” She felt stupid, coat and scarf, and him in his coat and scarf, as though she’d been trying for some sort of…symmetry.

“Oh, right, tea.” He did that sort of expression where every feature seemed to dismiss a cloud of insignificant realities. “Drank it all.”

“Did you…forget I was coming?”

He exhaled, a stream of gray unfurling. “No, Molly. Never that.”

She was blushing. It was cold out—it was cold most nights of the year in London, it seemed sometimes—and she was blushing. All hot-cheeked and girlish, and not the sort of person who had any right to show up to drink tea with Sherlock Holmes…or wait, was that the wrong way round? How did _he_ have any right, after all he’d done?

“Come in?” he asked. Voice, soft. Too soft. He was tired. She could see it in his eyes. She’d seen it every meeting with him, lately. And Sherlock went days without sleeping, sometimes, and then he usually looked wild. Not spent. Not like this.

“Alright,” she said. “Just for a little while. It’s late.”

“I suppose it is.” He was almost talkative as they went up the familiar stairway together. “I can never seem to think of time as late or early. There’s dark and light, and times at which crime occurs most generally…the hours of interest, the hours that are dead. And not the dead of night. Everything’s alive at night, and dangerous.”

“I imagine that was you, who tracked down the bomber.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Not Moriarty, back from the dead?” Her voice was pitchy, in that strange high half-whisper of Trying Not to Wake Other People.

“Not Moriarty.” He went to sit down, throwing off his coat, then seemed to remember something. Without a word, he dragged the yellow tapestry chair beside his. “Sit down, Molly. It’s your chair.”

“Sherlock,” she said, somewhere between misery and hope. “Sherlock, why am I here?”

He opened his mouth to say something glib; she could tell from the way his eyebrows flicked upwards. Then his face fell, and he said quietly, “Because I’m tired of being alone.”

“John’s come back.”

“But he’s sleeping at the moment.” Sherlock said it like it was obvious.

“So I’m a replacement.” The little edge had crept into her voice, bringing her back to other words, bringing her back to, _is this one of your stupid games?_

“You’re not a replacement for anyone.” Sherlock’s eyes were piercing. “You’re Molly. Molly Hooper.”

As if she didn’t know. But maybe she didn’t; she’d never quite known what it meant to him.

“He won’t stop plaguing me,” Sherlock said, turning the subject in a way she wasn’t ready for it to turn. “Moriarty. Is it…the same for you?”

“He did watch _Glee_ on my sofa.” Molly’s lips twisted. “I let him in, before I knew anything about who he really was. He didn’t hurt me…not then. But…he still used me. And knowing who he is… _was_ …it makes me feel not safe, sometimes.”

“I promise—” Sherlock said, and then stopped short. “I forget, Molly. I shouldn’t make promises. I’m no good at keeping them. And I don’t want to break one to you.”

“I trust you,” she said. And she did, despite everything. She did.

“That’s a promise in itself,” he said, and she thought he looked almost sad.

_I know what that’s like, looking sad when you think no one can see you._

She swallowed. “You’re going to beat him, Sherlock. You always do. And he’s dead. You’re not. That means you can be cleverer.”

He said nothing. He just…looked at her. And it struck her, then, that she wished she’d known what he’d looked like when he said those three words.

Something creaked. Another moment, over and gone. Sherlock was up in an instant, drawing a pistol from the side of his chair. Good lord, Molly thought. They really shouldn’t have a child here.

“Bedroom,” he said, which was enough to give her odd feelings itself, the thought of seeing his room. What in all hell was Sherlock Holmes’ bedroom like? Probably an extra chem lab, and a rubbish heap of priceless curiosities and body parts.

It was, in fact, surprisingly empty. Or it would have been, if she’d noticed that.

Because trailing after Sherlock, through the door he opened with one hand (gun in the other), she could only see one thing.

The woman in the bed, asleep to all the world, save for the tiny smile playing around her red lips.

Last time Molly’d seen her, she was on a slab, bashed about the face.

_Irene Adler._

**Author's Note:**

> Slow burn Sherlolly. Probably sporadic updates. The IOU concept at the end, I did see something similar in another fic--it's utterly different how it plays out, but if the author would like to take credit for that inspiration, feel free.


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